Why is Python popular, while Lisp and Scheme aren't?

[Gareth McCaughan]

"Courageous" wrote:

>  On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 10:56:48 -0800, Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
>  
> >deed, I think it's highly ironic that people are complaining about
> >parenthesis-counting when it comes to Python, because "I don't want to
> >be keeping track of whitespace indentation" is one of the key
> >anti-Python sentiments (from people who have never used it).  The fact
> >that we're not complaining about this in Python now, of course, is
> >because it's a non-issue -- you _don't_ have to do such things, your
> >editor does it for you.  For Lisp programming, it's exactly the same
> >thing.
>  
>  But requires a specific class of editor, whereas all other editors
>  around can handle basic programming languages.

I frequently edit Lisp code using vim. It works just fine.
There are lots of very cool things you can do with emacs,
but I can't quite see how the existence of an editor with
exceptionally good language support is supposed to be a
disadvantage.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc